1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to estimating method and apparatus and an estimating program of a wire harness, and a recording medium thereof, in which the wiring property, such as the wiring shape, of a wire harness whose base ends are constrained and which have connectors constrained by connector bases at distal ends thereof, is estimated by FEM (Finite Element Method) and the analysis result is estimated on the screen of a display unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-373533 discloses a virtual method of a wire harness comprising: a data input step of three-dimensional design data of the wire harness wired on a vehicle; an image display step of displaying an image of a reference wiring data as a background image on the three-dimensional virtual space; a three-dimensional design data display step of overlaying and displaying the three-dimensional design data on the background image; and a three-dimensional data deforming step of changing the shape of wire harness as the three-dimensional data in accordance with the input from data input means and displaying the changed shape. With the virtual method of the wire harness disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-373533, the virtual wiring is executed without testing the wire harness so as to prevent the dimensional shortage in accordance with the three-dimensional design data on the three-dimensional space and to further prevent the generation of a forced attaching angle by the data input means. Thus, the wiring state is determined without the repetition of tests.
In the design of industrial products, a structure analysis using the FEM (Finite Element Method) is well known. In the FEM, a shape model having divided finite elements of a structure is formed and the entire shape is analyzed in accordance with the properties of elements. For example, the reactive force or deformation of a weather strip exhibiting the elasticity of an automobile part is analyzed by the FEM. Further, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-139570 discloses a design supporting method of a wire harness, by which the shape, physicality, and constraining conditions of the wire harness are set, and thus the wiring shape of the wire harness is analyzed by the FEM on the assumption that a wire harness is regarded as an elastic member with a plurality of beam elements having circular cross-sections being connected one by one.
With the design supporting method of the wire harness disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-139570, the deformation of the wire harness between the constraining positions is checked on the screen. However, the design of wire harness must be further viewed about conditions of the interference with peripheral parts due to the deformation in the connector detaching state at the distal end of the wire harness, the operating load due to the reactive force to the wire harness in the parallel advancing direction or rotating direction upon attaching the connector, the fluctuation of deformation due to the tolerance of the wire-harness length, and the amount of change in wire harness due to the vibration. In particular, it is advantageous in estimation that the moving range of the distal end of the wire harness, to which the connector is attached, is variously and easily set for estimation and the corresponding deformation of the wiring shape by the three-dimensional model including the connector is displayed.